JAKE STURMER: They're at James Price Point, just north of Broome on the Kimberley coast.

PHOTOGRAPHER: We're going to record that unremarkable bit of coastline and show it to the world or Australia.

JAKE STURMER: They're here to capture image of the site of a proposed $30 billion gas precinct.

A project the Premier and Woodside say will bring enormous social and financial benefits to the region but conservationists fear will bring environmental destruction.

CHRISTIAN FLETCHER: I just don't see why we should ruin the Kimberley, it's so unique and it should be kept for tourism, it should just be left alone.

JAKE STURMER: It's reminiscent of the Franklin River dispute in Tasmania almost 30 years ago in which pictures proved decisive.

ABC NEWS REPORTER (OLD FOOTAGE): The blockade on the Franklin River which ran for four months in late 1982 and early 1983 not only became a seminal moment in Australian history, but the most significant reference point for activists for years to come.

GEOFFREY COUSINS, BUSINESSMAN: I rafted the Franklin River in Tasmania at about that time and let me tell you it's life changing experience and so is travelling through the Kimberley.

So, yes, there are a lot of similarities and many similarities also with the campaign that we ran against the Gunn's pulp mill in Tasmania.

Which everyone said would be built, no matter what.

JAKE STURMER: Adviser to John Howard, ad agency CEO, Telstra board member - not the credentials you would associate with an environmental campaigner.

BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: This is pretty desperate stuff isn't it.

GEOFFREY COUSINS: Yeah.

JAKE STURMER: But Geoffrey Cousins knows how to play the game.

He's helped to stall the construction of a $2 billion pulp mill in Tasmania.

GEOFFREY COUSINS: I understand how business works and thinks. And maybe in that area that's where I can bring a little bit of different attitude to these things.

JAKE STURMER: The corporate heavyweight has now thrown his support behind the push to stop the Kimberley gas hub.

GEOFFREY COUSINS: It really is shameful that you get these jumped up little politicians who come in to power for a brief period of time, disappear again, nobody ever remembers them.

I mean can you remember who the Premier was when the Franklin River question was being looked at? I am darned if I can and I was involved in it!

They disappear and yet they can do an enormous amount of damage.

JAKE STURMER: And while Cousins is just beginning to take up the fight over east, in Perth the campaign is in full swing.

How difficult is it to get the message across, given James Price Point is thousands of kilometres away?

PAUL GAMBLIN, WWF: Look I won't pretend it's not hard to reach the community about the importance of this place but we're seeing a real change now.

There are thousands of people, tens of thousands of people across WA and across Australia who are waking up to the perils that this region faces.

PAUL GAMBLIN: This is about the values, protecting the values forever of incredibly important places like the Kimberley.

JAKE STURMER: But in late 2008, the Environmental Protection Authority found the impacts and risks of a precinct at James Price Point would be manageable and analysts say the location does have its advantages

PETER STRACHAN, RESOURCES ANALYST: James Price Point is close to Broome, it's 30 kilometres away. It has a road to the area which will need to be sealed.

So you don't have to build a township. It's a flat piece of land, there's no specific native title over that area, it's crown land, it's open land.

JAKE STURMER: And there is also another big reason.

A J.P. Morgan investor briefing from December last year says Woodside gets twice as much value from a gas hub at James Price Point, than piping gas to existing facilities in the Pilbara.

GEOFFREY COUSINS: But the other big shareholders, they really don't get such a great benefit or indeed in some cases the situation is quite neutral for other sites.

JAKE STURMER: The briefing says Shell, which has a 9 per cent interest in Browse, would get similar values from processing the gas in the Pilbara but with less capital expenditure.

Irrespective of the internal politics between the joint venture partners, the clock is ticking.

The Premier has begun the compulsory acquisition process to push ahead with the gas hub.

COLIN BARNETT: And put it simply time has simply run out. We are now simply past the point at which further processes, further delays can be agreed to.

GEOFFREY COUSINS: For the State Premier to be trying to benefit a largely Western Australian based company and to benefit his State Budget for a short period of time is pretty cheap politics.

But that's a claim the Premier rejects.

COLIN BARNETT: Woodside may well lead the first project to be developed and located at James Price Point.

In future years maybe over the next 10 years I would expect perhaps up to three plants to be co-located at that site. So this is not solely about Woodside.

JAKE STURMER: That sort of certainty is exactly what the industry wants to hear.

NICOLE ROOCKE, CHAMBER OF MINERALS AND ENERGY: It's important for there to be certainty around the processes that companies can see that where development is proposed, where that environmental impacts can be minimised, that those processes will breed.

JAKE STURMER: Green groups are working to destabilise those processes. Right now they're pushing the Federal Government to re-examine alternative sites and they're hopeful of success with the Greens due to hold the balance of power in the Senate.

GEOFFREY COUSINS: If that political process, however, fails, then we will use precisely the same tactics that we used with Gunn's in Tasmania, that is, to go to the financiers, the customers and the shareholders of all of those big corporate, all of those big corporations who will have their reputations at risk in a project of this kind.

JAKE STURMER: Colin Barnett is standing firm.

COLIN BARNETT: As Premier, I have a responsibility to ensure that major investment projects such as Liquefied Natural Gas are not lost to this State.

JAKE STURMER: But these photographers will be hoping their memorable images also persuade the public that this pristine environment should not be sacrificed and lost to this State forever.

PHOTOGRAPHER: I think it's magical. I love the colours. I mean look around you have got sand, you have got the red Pindan Cliffs here. The blue skies, and its magical colour really.

PHOTOGRAPHER: It's never too late. There is always that chance that we can stop this and it's the people that can do it.